This issue is the conclusion to the Second Coming storyline featuring the JLA versus Anansi the trickster god. Anansi is also the god of stories so leading up to this point he has taken all of the origins of the JLA and spun different versions of them. The only member of the team left who has to try to restore things is Vixen. The beginning of the story shows Vixen gaining her animal totem powers back which she has been without since the series started. Vixen hunts down Bruce Wayne who fights crime as the Paladin an assassin who kills off criminals. She also runs into a very different Green Lantern. They take her to the Fortress of Solitude where Wonder Woman is mourning the death of her husband Superman. After a magic lasso lie detector test , Wonder Woman agrees to get this dimensions version of the JLA back together to fight Anansi. In the end it turns out that all of this has taken place inside of Vixen’s totem and was a test by Anansi to see if she was worthy of helping him in a coming crisis. Overall a nice conclusion to the story that leaves some possible threads for a follow up. There is some great artwork by Benes in this issue and the alternate JLA has some great looks to it. Overall this issue gets 4 out of 5 Silver Age JLAers.

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Had a chance to go to the 1st Windy City Comicon yesterday. It was held at 3656 N Halsted in Chicago. Overall not a bad show, but it definitely has a lot of room to improve. I liked the set up in the basketball court which had a nice open feel to the show. On the downside there was a severe lack of Bronze Age and older comics. This may have had something to do with the fact that there were only 8 comic vendors along with 2 or 3 toy/apparel vendors. Most of the comic vendors appeared to only have "hot" comics on there back walls and $1 books in their back issues boxes, which mostly contained books from the past year. The Artist’s Alley section took up the middle of the floor and took up most of the space in the room. They also had a lot of space dedicated to heroclix and magic tournament tables. Overall I would give it a 3 out of 5 X-Men. I am hoping this con becomes bigger and better as the Chicago area needs another con besides Wizard World.

It is amazing how much the quality of a crossover book can vary. In some of the Secret Invasion crossovers there is no coherence with the main event, or in some cases (SI Amazing Spider-Man) reason for the characters name to even be on the book. This issue of New Avengers however, shows exactly what all crossover books should aspire to be: a great story on its own that actually enhances the event. The Hood is rounding up the villains in an attempt to figure out what happened to Madame Masque when she was captured by SHIELD. He ended up rescuing her but after killing some agents, they noticed that they had changed into Skrulls. They then capture a Skrull agent to show the assembled villains what they are up against. After killing the agent and the spy that infiltrated the group, the Hood goes home to do some "soul searching" to figure out how and why he has new powers. It is revealed that the Dormammu is his benefactor in the cliffhanger ending. The artwork is very clean and moves the story along very well. The writing is top notch by Bendis and it would make sense that the best SI crossovers would come from him since he is writing the main title.